Climate reporting deluged by high carbon adverts

The In Our Hands report from the House of Lords in the UK, published in October 2022, highlighted the fact that a third of emissions reductions needed by 2035 would have to come from travel, food production and the heating of homes. 

It described advertising as a “powerful influence on customer behaviour on a large scale” adding that “measures to regulate advertising of high carbon and environmentally damaging products” would be necessary. 

The Promoting Pollution Before Reporting The Climate report examined the advertising in 10 British national print newspapers on two key days during the COP29 conference. It found that the single largest category of paid-for advertising for high carbon products was travel, which included adverts under the newspapers’ own branding. The ads covered 1,745 inches of newsprint across both dates, or 9.2 percent of all adverts.

The report also found that there is a strong correlation between UK national print newspapers carrying a significant amount of high carbon travel advertising and then featuring very limited reporting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP29) event in November 2024, and the issue of climate breakdown more generally.

Conspicuous

The COP29 conference took up just 2.1 per cent of all editorial space in the 10 national newspapers on the two days when the issue was highest on the international news agenda, with additional reporting that included any mention at all of the climate issue making up a further 0.5 per cent of the available editorial space.

The British national print media missed two significant and obvious opportunities to discuss concrete climate impacts during the COP29 conference: the Valencia flood protests in Spain and Storm Bert in Britain. We found that only one report of these events, out of 19 articles across 1320.25 column inches, even mentioned climate change.

The Financial Times was the only newspaper not to carry any high carbon travel advertising during the two key days reporting the conference. The newspaper also had the most coverage of COP29. 

The FT carried no advertising for energy companies, energy adjacent products, travel, or supermarkets on either of the two days that fall into the scope of this report. It did carry 329 ins of advertising for the banking and investments sector.

The energy sector was conspicuous by its absence from the pages of the print newspapers on the opening day and the morning after the closing day of COP29. 

Refuse

The energy sector placed less than half of one per cent (0.49) of the adverts that appeared across the 10 national print newspapers on the two days of the COP29 conference being examined. The industry seems to have invested in social media, sponsorship and lobbying instead of traditional print advertising. 

At least three British publications have either stopped publishing fossil fuel advertising or stopped taking sponsorship.

The Guardian is the only national newspaper which has made a commitment to end advertising for coal, oil and gas companies. The publication carried an advert for EDF opposite its climate coverage during COP29: according to the EDF’s own public disclosures, the company generates six percent of its energy from burning gas.

The liberal newspaper announced on Wednesday, 29 January 2020 that it would no longer accept advertising from oil and gas companies – claiming to be the first “global news organisation” to “institute an outright ban on taking money from companies that extract fossil fuels”. 

The British Medical Journal banned advertising and research funded by companies that produce fossil fuels in 2020. The weekly peer-reviewed journal went further and became the first major publication in the world to refuse advertising from banks that fund fossil fuel production and use in October 2024.

Bans

The New Scientist magazine stopped accepting sponsorship from oil and arms companies for its live events in 2022 after academics began withdrawing. However, the publication has not publicly stated that it had banned advertising from fossil fuel companies. 

Shell had sponsored the Earth Zone at the New Scientist Live event in 2018. BP was listed as a zone sponsor for 2019. However, after several scientists pulled out of the event that year the oil company was removed as a sponsor. 

Dr Emma Garnett, a sustainability research fellow at the University of Cambridge, was among those that withdrew. “It is vital organisations refuse fossil fuel sponsorship because these companies are polluting our discussions as well as our planet,” she said. 

Newspapers in other European countries have also announced bans. 

Le Monde, among France’s leading news publications, announced on 21 April 2023, that it had “set itself the goal of gradually reducing the proportion of advertising for products and activities based solely on the use of fossil fuels” in its annual climate statement. 

Proprietors

The Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC committed in September 2019 to stop taking advertising from high carbon industries. The ban extended to any advertising that promotes fossil fuel based goods and services, beyond energy companies themselves. 

The newspaper at the time of the announcement had advertising reviews of £85,000 and anticipated that a fifth of this came from advertising they would no longer accept. 

Andreas Gustavsson, the editor in chief, said at the time: “How far can journalism go when it is bankrolled by forces that have everything to gain from blocking large-scale action to address our climate crisis?”

Dagens Nyheter, a second Swedish newspaper, announced it would restrict advertising from fossil fuel companies. Its new policy reads: “On our premium formats (large ads on the front page, “takeovers” on the site, etc.) we do not publish ads from actors who have the majority of their income from the fossil industry.”

The public are being told by reporters that climate scientists are warning that we must stop burning fossil fuels, but those who still buy print newspapers are bombarded with adverts suggesting everyone else is enjoying long haul flights and luxury cruises. 

Newspaper proprietors and editors need to take their responsibilities more seriously, and act as though we are in a climate emergency. Most newspaper owners are billionaires, but their vast wealth will be meaningless as we enter ecological and social collapse. Younger people understand the science of climate breakdown and have no trust in national print newspapers precisely because of this double standard.

This Author

Brendan Montague is an editor of The Ecologist. He is also the author of the Promoting Pollution Before Reporting The Climate report commissioned by the New Weather Institute for the Badvertising campaign.